


Trust

by MakeSadieStop



Series: This Something [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Invasion of Privacy, Light Angst, Light Bondage, M/M, Maybe more subtle than light but eh, Ninja Angst, Ohshit Naruto's in trouble, Teasing, This is not innocent childhood dream behavior, Waitwait Naruto wyd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 22:59:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11542203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MakeSadieStop/pseuds/MakeSadieStop
Summary: Naruto goes through Gaara's things, and there will be consequences. Just not in the way Gaara thinks. Mostly feelings, almost smut.





	Trust

Naruto has no sense of privacy, and Gaara hasn’t yet decided which one of them deserves a slap.

Maybe it’s what he gets for refusing to strip in Naruto’s office. After the last time, he can’t trust himself not to say something wrong—more than that, he can’t know what will turn out to be wrong, in Naruto’s eyes.

Historically, offices bring out the neediest and ugliest in both of them, so this one would be unacceptable. But there aren’t many other options. When the meeting was over and the ambassadors ushered out, Gaara poked his head back into the hall, but—it was occupied. He’ll leave it at that. He will never speak of it to anyone ever, least of all _his sister_ and _Naruto’s advisor_. (If he pretends that they don’t have names, he can pretend he never heard those names said like that.)

For once, Naruto was tactful, neglecting to point out the trauma in Gaara’s face. He suggested they return to his house instead.

Gaara agreed before he’d even thought about it. As they departed, he grabbed his luggage from Kankuro without a word. Given the dignity of his official position, his brother hadn’t been thrilled about getting saddled with it in the first place, so he didn’t question his stroke of luck. The Seventh Hokage and Fifth Kazekage kept a politically respectful distance, offering up the occasional diplomatic observation or Great War reminiscence as they went home together for a professional cup of sake. All appearances were kept up and all reputations were in order.

No one ever suggested abstinence as an option. They wouldn’t be in so deep now if it was, if it ever had been.

Once they’d stepped past the threshold, Gaara tossed his bag onto the bed, extricated a more comfortable outfit from it, and headed for Naruto’s shower.

“What are the clothes for?”

“You’re not joining me. You’ll get a jet of ice water for your troubles if you try.”

“But I thought we—”

“We are. I need a minute first.”

More like an eternity, after what he’d witnessed, but patience was not Naruto’s strength.

Gaara locked the bathroom door, just so he wouldn’t be tempted.

***

By the time he came out, with the damp red strands sticking to his tattoo in a way he knew would drive Naruto mad, curiosity had already won the day.

He knows that saying about the cat. He would test it out, only he’s not sure that the bit about it coming back applies to foxes.

Naruto is perched on the edge of his mattress, stare fixated on the gleaming plate, the faded strip of black slack in his hands.

Gaara violates every impulse in his body when he doesn’t reach out and snatch it away.

He has opened his mouth to demand its return—not polite, but still nonviolent—when Naruto tells him, “I didn’t think you’d be the type to keep your first headband.”

“My only headband,” Gaara corrects him, almost without thinking.

“Way to rub it in. _Some_ of us have to take more than one exam before we’re leading the whole village, you know.”

The teasing mock-bitterness in Naruto’s voice fades soon enough, replaced by a gentle musing. It’s almost like he doesn’t know how close he came to being throttled. “Still. You never struck me as a sentimental guy. I mean, _keeping_ it is surprising enough. Packing it and taking it with you everywhere? Even I don’t go that far.”

“‘Even you’?”

Gaara sits down next to him while awaiting the answer. If it isn’t sufficiently soul-baring, he decides, he’ll be close enough to grab the headband back and strangle him with it.

“Well . . .” Naruto drapes it over his knee so he can gesticulate through the uncomfortable situation. This is a good sign. Whenever Naruto starts to talk with his hands, it means passion or embarrassment is involved. After such a breach, Gaara is crossing his fingers for the second.

“My headband was a really big deal for me as a kid, ya know? Because once I had it, it meant I was a ninja, and once I was a ninja, I was _that_ much closer to being Hokage, right? So I got really obsessed with it. I tried to take Master Iruka’s, I mean, more than once.”

Naruto glances at Gaara, to see if that’s enough to earn forgiveness. When he only receives a curt nod, he takes a breath and continues.

“And I was so excited when I finally got it. I wore it for as long as I could, really, without ruining it. I went through a couple more after that, but I still have the first one—have them all, actually, they’re somewhere around here if you want to do some revenge-snooping. But _like I said_.”

Gaara has finally begun to soften when the sudden fierceness jerks him out of sympathy. That, and the sharp poke to his forehead.

“ _I_ don’t carry mine with me into _foreign countries_ , so get talking. What kind of hopes and dreams do _you_ have that make yours into some kind of security blanket?”

Gaara reaches up, takes Naruto’s wrist, and oh-so-carefully pulls it down. With all contact gone, he begins.

“Being a ninja, for me, represented further confirmation of my existence.”

He pauses. So far, this is much the same as Naruto said—he must distance this from that tale of inspiring dedication, and fast.

“When I received my headband, I took it as killers acknowledging my ability to kill. Then, once I killed enough, they would acknowledge me again by promoting me—and again, and again, until they were no longer alive to acknowledge anything. This was as far as I saw.”

A glance shows that Naruto is listening—not smiling, but not frowning, either. Just waiting, quietly, as though deciding how horrified he will need to be. This is what Gaara wants.

“I keep it to remind myself of what I once was, and what I never want to be again as Kazekage. I carry it with me so I won’t forget it when I’m on the outside of my own walls.”

Naruto digests this. It is Gaara’s turn to wait.

“That’s depressing,” he announces. “I want a better one.”

Gaara has another one. He’s just not sure if it’s better.

Another glance. Naruto isn’t letting this go.

With a sigh, Gaara mutters, “And I was wearing it when I met you.”

“ _Now_ you’re talking.”

“I was wearing it when I changed, and when you changed me. It reminds me of what I _do_ want to be . . . And _who_ I want to have.”

Not a glance this time—a stare. Gaara holds it until Naruto clears his throat in rapid succession, holding up the headband to peer closer at it, as though he wants to study the properties of an object with so many meanings.

Gaara is more grateful than he is hurt. If bright blue could send such a shiver through him, he has no idea what cold green did to Naruto.

“Well, now that you’re done, I have a confession of my own . . . And god, I’m going to hell.”

Gaara doesn’t like cursing, but here it is good. It gives him an excuse to scoot a few centimeters further away, then speak with a light curiosity.

“You have my attention.”

“When I went through your bag, I was looking for—fun.”

Gaara is confused for the longest time. Naruto must sense this, because he sighs, raises his head, twitches his eyebrows up at him once or twice, and then Gaara has no choice but to understand.

“ _Oh_.”

“I mean, when you grabbed it from your brother all huffy like that, then just threw it down on the bed and left me with it, what was I supposed to—”

“No, no, that’s a . . . very reasonable assumption. I just wish you had asked me before you—”

“I know! I’m sorry! Really, I should’ve known better. You may not seem like the type of guy to carry your first headband, but you’re _definitely_ not the type of guy to have, um, stuff.”

Gaara isn’t sure how to take that, so it’s a few moments before he has anything more to contribute. “Were you disappointed?”

“No! No, not at all! We had a really good talk about—feelings! And—and—”

“And you want to talk about _anything else_.”

“Yes! Please!”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

Naruto looks at the headband. Then he looks at Gaara.

Then he looks at the headband again. This cycle goes on for a concerningly long time before he finally tosses his head back to ask the ceiling’s forgiveness.

“I really am going to hell,” he groans.

“You keep telling me so, but you haven’t told me why.”

“Just—just shut your mouth! And take off your shirt! Now _I_ need a minute.”

Gaara does as he’s told. He knows better than to question this.

Though his vow of silence is tested when Naruto shuts the bathroom door, and Gaara notices that he took the headband with him.

***

The jury is still out on whether Naruto deserves a ticket to hell, but if he stalls for much longer, Gaara is going to send him there.

He pulls his knees up to his chest and stares straight ahead, concentrating on the doorknob and leveling sheer force of will in its direction so it may open without aid of sand.

His efforts are successful. Naruto emerges.

At least that time sequestered wasn’t for nothing. The jacket and shirt are off—dumped unceremoniously into Naruto’s bathtub, knowing him. The seal is on display, and Gaara tenses: first against the surge of memories, then with the effort of _not_ leaping up and attacking it.

He’s not sure how the Nine-Tails would feel about it, but at and around the spiral where the fox resides, Naruto is quite sensitive.

He is saved from further contemplation by a shifting in the mattress—Naruto’s knees as he climbs up to join him, knocking Gaara off-balance for a moment.

“Alright.” Naruto waits a moment to be sure he has Gaara’s attention, then raises the headband to eye level. Wind’s symbol has never looked so alien to him as it does now, gripped between the Fire Shadow’s fingers and thumb.

“I have an idea, but I have no idea how to say it, so I’ll need you to lie down and trust me. And the second you _don’t_ trust me, yell or kick or something.”

This does not exactly instill trust, but Gaara will do his best. Cautiously, he leans his body backward, letting his head rest on the pillow. _Naruto’s_ pillow. It smells of him, and Gaara’s muscles have no dignity, or otherwise very little knowledge of romantic clichés, because they relax instantly at the familiar scent.

They may be without dignity, but they are not without sense. Gaara goes rigid as Naruto takes his wrists.

Naruto speaks before the past strikes a panic.

“Above your head.” Such a reassuring murmur, with all the confidence and tenderness that every word out of his mouth yet today has lacked. “That’s it.”

Gaara obeys without remembering that ‘obey’ is a word. The buzz in his mind is so intense that he almost doesn’t feel the first brush of fabric over skin.

 _Almost_.

He feels every stitch of it as it tightens.

Gaara has forgotten how to ask a question, so the explanation comes as a surprise, even though he desperately needed it.

“I wanted to try it out. I’ve read about it, a little, and the headband seemed like it would be _just_ long enough . . . Your wrists are _so_ skinny.”

Not nervousness in his voice. Just wonder. Fascination, as Naruto tweaks the knots a little.

“You can get out any time you want. I just want to make sure you know that. Even if it feels like you’re trapped, you’re really not. They’re simple, see? All I did was hook the hard part around this bar on the headboard, then tie on either side. So it’ll be no trouble, if you get sore, or just scared.”

He lets that sink in.

“Are you scared?”

The prompt comes softly, slowly, but the way Gaara shakes his head is neither of those things.

“Okay. Cool.”

Naruto is satisfied with what he’s done to Gaara’s wrists, because now one hand drifts up, grazing over his forehead.

“You know I don’t like it when you hide this.”

“Do you?” Gaara honestly can’t remember.

“Yeah, I do. I _hate_ it when you cover yourself.”

“You can fix it.”

“Planning on it. Doing it right now, actually.” A few more little strokes and brushes, and he leaves it alone. “There.”

“I _meant_ —” What did Gaara mean? “You _can_. Whatever you want. I can’t stop you.”

The implication of these last four words hits them both just as he says them.

Gaara doesn’t know what took his breath just now: the realization, or the grin spreading over Naruto’s face.

“You _can’t_ , can you?”

His voice is casual—lazy, even. But as Naruto traces his fingertips down Gaara’s jawline, over his throat, pausing for a moment at the notch in his collarbone—

No touch has ever felt so _deliberate_.

“You son of _ahhhh_ —”

Naruto has pressed the pad of his finger to one of the marks he left, among the lowest lining his collarbone. Just to remind him of how it got there, how easy it would be to give another.

All that separates sex from torture is what you are compelled to beg for.

“You should watch your language. It won’t do anything to insult me when _you can’t stop me_.”

“You are _evil_.”

“I’d disagree, but hey. What I’m about to do to you, even I’ll probably have to admit it.”

“Damn you, Naruto.”

“The more you cuss me, the more I’ll have to scold you, and the less I’ll get to touch you. Is that what you want?”

A staredown ensues. If he wants to preserve his last remaining shreds of innocence, Gaara must close his eyes.

“Thought so.”

Naruto finally leaves his neck alone. Gaara hasn’t finished sighing in relief when that hand comes to a stop over his heart, an experimental press to the skin.

His eyes snap open as the breath rushes in.

“Oh, wow, you’re just _losing it_ , aren’t you?”

The amazement in Naruto’s voice as he notices doesn’t help the problem in the slightest.

“I’ve barely done a thing, and it’s already this fast?”

Gaara is not allowed to curse at him.

“You’re adorable. I love this.”

Naruto, Gaara notices, is careful not to get ‘you’ and ‘this’ mixed up.

Gaara still wants to curse, but this time with gratitude, because Naruto has saved him from thinking yet again.

“I told you I read about this, right?”

As much of a nod as Gaara can manage, without exposing too much vulnerable skin.

“It was this terrible book—a dirty book—pervy sage wrote it.”

For a pervy individual to write a dirty book seems appropriate. Though ‘sage’ seems a bit odd here.

“I remember . . . he used to do ‘research,’ for his series. Mostly peeping on girls in hot springs, actually. It was kinda creepy.”

This doesn’t seem very relevant. But Gaara braces for the moment that Naruto turns it around.

“I’m just thinking, I’ve got you captive like this, right? And this definitely isn’t creepy. Look at your face, listen to your heartbeat, you might as well be screaming for it.”

Naruto leans down, kisses his cheek, breathes out against his ear.

“Maybe it’s time I did some research on you.”

Just the suggestion, vague as it is, and Naruto has set Gaara on fire for the thousandth time.

“Now your heart’s just going crazy, so do I hear a yes?”

It’s hard enough to breathe, but Gaara hopes that these gasps come out as strongly affirmative. They do, because Naruto lifts his head, smiling so Gaara can see.

“Good . . . Now let me think.”

Naruto lifts his hand so he can study Gaara properly—eyes narrowed, propping up his chin, tilting his head from side to side so he can see from every angle.

An inspection is worse than an exploration. It builds up all the same anticipation, but offers not even a hint at relief. Gaara’s wrists and arms begin to ache as he imagines how long Naruto could draw this out.

Gaara will have to apologize for his earlier accusations after this, because Naruto doesn’t make him wait long. He snaps his fingers, the sharp sound jolting Gaara out of the muddled, shameful heat. “Alright! I think I know where to start.”

With the way his hand hovers, it looks for a moment like he’s going back to Gaara’s heart—what is the obsession? Isn’t this about researching, discovering? When it comes to Gaara’s heart, Naruto knows everything there is to know.

But that’s not what he wants. Where he hesitates now, neither one of them knows anything.

“I mean, on a _guy_. . . I’ve always wondered what these are _for_ , ya know?”

“For you.”

Silence, except for their breathing. Gaara’s pulse pounding in his ears.

Naruto looks as surprised as Gaara feels. Not just that Gaara can still talk, but that he would say . . .

Naruto doesn’t do anything yet. It’s almost like he’s waiting for Gaara to take it back. But when there is no retraction, his fingertips touch down, come together—more than a tap, less than a pinch. Less than Naruto can dream up, but more than Gaara can handle.

“ _Heyyy-_!”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, let me untie—”

“No!”

The shout hangs in the air for a long time—long enough for the full length of Gaara’s spine to return to the mattress, for breath to return to his lungs.

“Don’t stop.”

Naruto’s eyes are wide, his hands flat on Gaara’s shoulders where they dropped after the interruption. He isn’t going after the knots anymore, but he’s not giving Gaara what he wants, either. It must be unclear.

“Again.”

Gaara focuses on those eyes—purest blue, panic fading to make room for wonder. Beauty gives him strength.

“ _Please_.”

It is not the first time Gaara has to beg, and it will not be the last.

***

The knots are tugged undone, and the headband is tucked into the bag. As Naruto pulls him under the covers, Gaara’s dim consciousness flickers with surprise that he has not yet been compared to a doll tonight.

Perhaps Naruto prefers to save such sweet nothings for when they are clothed—so there are at least two layers between them first.

“I’m sorry that you need another shower.”

“If you’re apologizing for—for— _that_ —then next time, I will tie you up, and I will hit you.”

“I’m sorry that I said I’m sorry.”

“You are forgiven.”

With the way Naruto holds him, Gaara is staring at his neck. It is safer than his face. Gaara can feel the cords tightening and loosening with his words, but he cannot see the hope, the tentativeness in his face as he says them.

“For snooping, too?”

When Gaara sighs, he makes sure it lands right on Naruto’s ear.

“ _Yes_.”

“Okay—okay, good. I was really scared that I’d lost your trust forever and that we were just avoiding talking about it in light of our just discovering that we are _seriously_ kinky.”

“Apologize again.”

“What is it this time?”

“Thinking stupid thoughts.”

“Just tattoo ‘I’m sorry’ right on my forehead. It’ll be quicker.”

“‘Love’ and ‘sorry.’ We’re a perfect pair.”

The laughter is too loud. So is the silence that follows.

“Do you ever think that—maybe you trust me too much, though?”

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

“No, no, not at all, I’m just . . .”

“Just what?”

“You don’t wear your armor when we’re together.”

“Unless one of your newfound kinks involves getting sand in places where a wise man would not want sand, that’s for your own good.”

“But I could _hurt_ you, Gaara. Don’t you get it?”

“Could. But wouldn’t.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Gaara draws his sigh out for longer than he needs to.

Naruto doesn’t check if his eyes are open anymore. If his breath suggests sleep, Naruto will believe him. And Gaara will not have to answer.

**Author's Note:**

> Not too many notes on this one. As I did last time, I'll start from the top.  
> In the beginning, there's some very obvious background ShikaTema. I can imagine Gaara being . . . well, not so much protective over, but oblivious to his siblings romantic lives, so 'trauma' is no exaggeration. (Also: SHIKAMARU YOU DOG.)  
> After that, I just want to clarify something--it's definitely possible for Gaara to stay over at Naruto's house, as Hinata hasn't moved in with him yet. I haven't decided yet if I want them to be engaged at this point, but they're definitely not married. If you'll remember in Nothing Hurts, Gaara teased Naruto about being a traditionalist, so they're not living together. Part of why I decided this was that even I just couldn't bear having Naruto cheat on her in their shared bed.  
> I used 'headband' throughout to refer to--well, the shiny ninja thingy that most ninja wear on their heads, even if Gaara never did. It was just the least awkward translation, since the only other one I've seen is 'forehead protector' and I didn't want to mangle the original Japanese word here.  
> I'd like to point out one last thing--the way that they're avoiding emotional intimacy. Naruto says outright that he would rather talk about anything but feelings, and there are several other instances as well. They choose sex over conversation at nearly every opportunity, which I think is quite sad.  
> Those are honestly all the notes I can think of, though another one may strike me later. As of right now, I'm just going to pat myself on the back for writing this with a straight, non-blushing face.


End file.
